Roslyn Estates

The Village of Roslyn Estates, established in 1907, and incorporated in 1931, was designed by Dean Alvord, a real estate developer with a vision of suburban residential enclaves, with spacious landscaped lots and a diversity of traditional housing styles. Toward this end his company employed both landscape architects and architects, including the firm of Kirby, Pettit and Green. (Carnegie Library, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories; Country Life Press Building, Garden City; Frank N. Doubleday House, Mill Neck).

Alvord’s design for Roslyn Estates featured curvilinear streets, rolling topography, pedestrian walkways and water features at the center of the village, beautifully treed and landscaped lots, and an array of domestic styles of the period including Spanish Mission, Colonial Revival, Jacobean, Elizabethan, and Japanese in a rich architectural mix . Dean Alvord came to Brooklyn from Syracuse in 1890, beginning his development efforts with a large community known as Prospect Park South. His intention was to demonstrate that a community based on new residential planning principles could be incorporated into a grid system. Alvord was a member of the fledgling Municipal Arts Society of New York, formed in 1893, which, taking its precepts from the City Beautiful Movement, was founded to promote excellence in urban planning and design, and civic improvement.

Roslyn Estates is now struggling not to lose the features envisioned in its original plan. A rash of major alterations have resulted in dramatic changes which many see as a threat to the character and design of the community. In an effort to thwart further threats to village fabric, the Board of Trustees passed a moratorium on building permit applications and appointed committees to report on three possible new strategies to control growth. One initiative was enlarging lot area requirements to more closely fit existing patterns. A second was to strengthen the powers and procedures of the Architectural Review Board, established in 1931. A third addressed a potential historic district encompassing the entire village. A recent public hearing attended by over 200 people resulted in adoption of new zoning regulations, but not the historic district proposal. A decision on the redrafting of the architectural review ordinance, to include the power to review demolitions, is pending.

Sea Cliff

Sea Cliff, the square mile village overlooking Hempstead Harbor, an encyclopedia of Victorian residential architectural styles, has been concerned with the problem of alterations and new construction that is either out of scale or out of character. A Methodist meeting camp site originally, Sea Cliff was sub-divided in 1871 for tent lots. In 1896, a formal map was filed allowing lots to be sold for development. By that time, however, Sea Cliff had already seen considerable summer residential development, most having taken place in the last two decades of the 19th century. Some late 19th century store fronts also survive.

The Village initially drafted a moratorium to halt all subdivision, construction and alterations, until new approaches could be drafted to address problems. Working with SPLIA, the Village Board studied potential strategies which included amending their existing architectural review law, and adopting an improved landmark ordinance to meet current State and Federal standards. The Sea Cliff Landmarks Association, a not-for-profit group of Village residents, was instrumental in supporting these initiatives, even supplying some seed money for survey work. Sea Cliff successfully passed its new historic preservation law in July, 2002. As a result of its strengthened powers, the Village is actively pursuing further documentation of its architectural resources. This past summer, two interns from the Columbia University Historic Preservation masters program were hired and successfully completed 300 Building-Structure Inventory forms. This initiative will furnish the information necessary to create Sea Cliff’s first historic districts and increase the number of structures listed on the National Register.